Fans harp steroids in baseball, not football

John TomaseThursday, January 10, 2013

Credit: The Associated Press

In this July 28, 2006, file photo, San Francisco Giants' Barry Bonds waits on the dugout steps to bat in the eighth inning with bases loaded against the Pittsburgh Pirates during a baseball game in Pittsburgh. With the cloud of steroids shrouding many candidacies, baseball writers may fail for the only the second time in more than four decades to elect anyone to the Hall.

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One sport features 270-pound cheetahs smashing each other in a 60,000-seat particle collider for three hours every week. The other showcases athletes of all builds, some of whom look like the UPS guy, save for their world-class arms.

If you had to guess which sport has a steroids problem — football or baseball — the answer should be, “Both of them.”

But as yesterday’s Hall of Fame results continue to illustrate, there’s a major disconnect between how fans and media view performance-enhancing drugs in relation to the two sports. Mere suspicion has kept Jeff Bagwell, probably one of the five greatest first basemen in history, from garnering even 60 percent of the vote in his three seasons on the ballot.

Meanwhile, if there’s one subject that never comes up when discussing the merits of potential NFL Hall of Famers, it’s whether they used steroids. The few who get to vote will tell you that’s because they’re specifically instructed to consider only a player’s performance.

But the reality is no one cares, which is fascinating. The same fans who foam and froth at the way PEDs tarnished the great game of baseball have no problem whatsoever with our new national pastime featuring 320-pounders who weigh 225 a month after retiring.

For whatever reason, we demand more from baseball. We hold Congressional hearings on rampant drug use. We appoint a former Senator to investigate the sport from top to bottom. We turn Hall of Fame voting into a referendum on two entire decades.

Football, meanwhile, just scoots on by like Dave Meggett, catching only a handful of players annually with a laughable testing program that allows lip service about how committed the NFL is to cleaning up the game.

On the same day that votes denying both Bagwell and catcher Mike Piazza (to name two) were being tabulated this weekend, an entirely different scene was taking place in Baltimore.

Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis, one of the game’s all-time greats, returned less than three months after tearing his triceps against the Cowboys. The injury was expected to end his season (and career), but Lewis ended up electric-sliding in victory formation because he’s an unparalleled competitor with a tireless work ethic and a legendary will.

At least that’s one way of looking at it. The more cynical among us could conjure other hypotheses, but when it comes to the NFL, there’s nothing quite like willful ignorance.

And speaking of willful ignorance, baseball writers have been getting slammed for years for letting the steroids era happen right under our noses with nary a mention of the stench. It’s not an unfair criticism. Is there even a peep, however, about the best, most connected NFL writers turning a blind eye to steroids at this very second? Nope.

Maybe it’s because drug use in baseball felt like a revelation, whereas if you asked 100 fans what percentage of NFLers abused PEDs, the majority would probably shrug and reply, “All of them.”

Walk through an NFL locker room and what you see is not human, muscles upon sinew upon granite. We ignore it in a tacit acknowledgement of the game’s brutal physicality, as if playing clean would effectively guarantee catastrophic injury.

In baseball, however, we jump on every sign. When Barry Bonds’ hat size tripled late in his career, the prosecution in his obstruction-of-justice case cited it as evidence of steroids use. When numerous NFL players start wearing braces in their 20s and 30s, no one bats an eyelash at the possibility that their heads have unnaturally changed shape/size, too.

And that brings us back to the Hall of Fame. In two years, Rodney Harrison will be eligible for Canton. He’s one of the best strong safeties of all time, and the Patriots don’t win two Super Bowls without him. He also happened to admit to using HGH in 2007.

Had I a vote, the incomparable Harrison would get it. Just like Mark McGwire has and will for as long as he’s on the ballot.

Here’s the strange part. One of those stances would get nods of approval, while the other would fill my inbox with hate.